The Politics of Respectability: Race, Policing, and Occupational Identity in Atlanta

Tatenda Mangurenje

doi:10.21428/1d6be30e.211b8dc3

Abstract

The Politics of Respectability: Race, Policing, and Occupational Identity in Atlanta

Highlights

As discourse surrounding police violence extends beyond African American academic and activist circles (Hall 1978; Shakur 1987; Bell 1992; Jackson 1994), one key feature has remained salient to the construction of the relationship between race and policing
Police violence had always been a feature of the American psyche, among racial and ethnic minorities, video evidence of Michael Brown’s death and the Black Lives Matter protests that ensued raised the public’s consciousness about the issue of police violence (Rickford 2015), leading up to the 2020 protests and riots in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor
As we think through the implications of this racialization, how do we situate the thousands of African American police officers around the United States? The categorization of police as white subjects contradicts demographic shifts in urban police departments, which have seen an increase in diversity over the last few decades as departments in major cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. shifted from predominately white to majority Black or Brown (Sklansky 2006; Governing 2015; Forman 2017)

Summary

Introduction

As discourse surrounding police violence extends beyond African American academic and activist circles (Hall 1978; Shakur 1987; Bell 1992; Jackson 1994), one key feature has remained salient to the construction of the relationship between race and policing. From August to December 2019, I conducted an ethnographic study of eleven African American police officers working in different police departments across the city. The reason why I say Rodney King influenced my decision to join the force is because I felt that I could be that light, even in the African American community, to show them that one of your own is a police officer and we can be professional and fair.

Results

Conclusion